The necessity to provide residential accommodation to various categories of staff within the hospital complex rests on the need of the individual hospital.
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In a sprawling hospital complex with a teaching centre, it may be essential to provide residential accommodation to all grades of medical staff, nurses, as well as student doctors.
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In such a case, it may be better to have the residential campus near but outside the boundary of the main hospital.
On the other hand, no residential accommodation need be provided if availability of staff can be ensured on shift duties or on as required basis. In between these two extremes, there are many possibilities and each hospital has to decide its requirement in the light of its own peculiar needs.
Today it is not considered essential for more than a small number of people to reside within the hospital site.
On the other hand, for hospitals developed in areas remote from urban centres, many of the staff members may leave if residential accommodation appropriate to their status is not available.
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Nevertheless, it is necessary to provide substantial on- site accommodation for the nursing staff and full accommodation for student nurses.
The extent of housing to be provided for the nursing staff will depend upon local housing conditions, viz. availability of suitable accommodation on hire in the vicinity.
In the past, a hostel for single members of nursing staff on the campus was usually enough, but not any more now. Due to changing social trends, more and more nurses are getting married, and the proportion of nurses getting married but still wanting to continue the service is increasing. Many nurses’ hostels attached to hospitals built 20 to 30 years ago are not fully occupied, because the married nurses cannot get into such hostels.